


Coming Round

by Still_and_Clear



Series: In the Basin [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, He'll be back there next chapter though, I finally got him out of his house!, This was only meant to be a one shot, mentions of past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 16:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1947693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Still_and_Clear/pseuds/Still_and_Clear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick recovers in hospital after being shot by Miriam Lass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Round

**Author's Note:**

> Hmmm. This was supposed to be a one-shot, and then three short chapters at the most. However, writing is hard, and I can apparently only deal with one main idea per mini-chapter. So, there will be more than I thought. Maybe three chapters after this one. I might even break 1000 words in one of them. Exciting!
> 
> Mentions of Hannibal's horrible-ness - which I promised on Tumblr- will now take place next chapter.

Frederick stared up at the ceiling in his hospital room. His tongue danced tentatively over the wound on the inside of his cheek, exactly as the doctor had told him not to do – honestly, had the man no understanding of even _rudimentary_ psychology? He had barely left the room before Frederick had started to mutinously poke at the wound, reciting the textbook definition of reactance in his head.

She had grinned when he told her that.

Freddie Lounds’ appearance at his bedside had been completely unexpected. Coming round slowly from the induced coma into which he had been placed, his eyes had struggled to focus on the source of the voice that had floated over him intermittently over the last couple of weeks. When he finally managed to fix on an image, he had wondered whether he was hallucinating, if his brain had decided to put him back on that table in the observatory to try and make sense of his current misery – or perhaps he had never left the table, and this was a fevered hallucination.

Much as she did in his flashbacks, though, Miss Lounds had brought him back down to earth. Her eyes had flickered up from the magazine she was reading aloud and, realising that he was awake, she had placed a slim hand lightly on his forearm and matter-of-factly told him she would fetch a nurse. The rest of that day had been an exhausting blur of tests and questions, and a throbbing headache. No-one would tell him what was going on exactly – worried about agitating him, he supposed - only that he was no longer under suspicion of being the Ripper. When they had finally left him alone to get some sleep that night, he had let the tears of relief run silently down his face as the news truly sunk in, breathing evenly through his mouth to keep from sobbing.

The next morning, dutifully chewing some truly disgusting oatmeal that the nurse had assured him was organic, he had wondered idly if she had been really been here at all, or whether his brain had decided to make Freddie Lounds’ face some sort of abstract comfort object. Frowning slightly, he reflected that if his subconscious had decided on this, at least Freddie had a pretty face. This train of thought, however, had been chased away by the arrival of the woman herself, the click of her high-heeled boots announcing her presence before she stuck her head round the door.

Frederick felt a lopsided smile slide over his face – as best as it could with the stitches, anyway – as he recollected her visit. She had told him, in breathless detail, of Hannibal’s dramatic unmasking – his _last supper_ , she had said, the satisfaction in her eyes and her up-tilted chin telling him that this was probably the headline she had used on her website. But why was she here now, he had asked – somewhat plaintively. She had told him that her investigation had confirmed her first thoughts: that the FBI were inept and he clearly wasn’t the Ripper, both of which warmed him pleasantly – and that she thought he _might_ want to give her an exclusive interview, which made him snort in amusement (although he hadn’t ruled it out). He noted that none of those reasons explained why she had bothered visiting during his induced coma, but that, he thought, should be readily discerned by a psychiatrist of his calibre during the next visit she had promised to make.


End file.
